Friday’s OLTL Hears An Echo From The Past

Kim Zimmer made her grand return to the soap opera world Friday as Echo DiSavoy on One Life to Live and if you blinked you missed it. La Zimmer was on screen for a total 10 seconds with no background story to reintroduce the character, leaving everyone who wasn’t watching the show 27 years ago a little confused. At least, that was the feeling in my case. I would have been a little less confused if the character’s name was mentioned in passing in the last week or two. That way, I could have had a chance to possibly research her. Also, I would have benefitted from One Life to Live promoting the return of an actress the caliber of Kim Zimmer.

If you weren’t involved in the soap opera community beyond watching on television, then you had no clue Kim Zimmer was going to show up on One Life to Live. I honestly don’t understand the lack of promotion for this actress. The show really missed a chance to get some of those old Guiding Light fans still watching soaps to come over to One Life to Live and see their starlet.

Nevertheless, Echo randomly appeared at Llanfair and quickly wrapped her arms around a very shocked Charlie (Brian Kerwin). She made a sassy remark about it being a long time since they had seen each other and that was it. The scene could have been a little better, if we saw Viki (Erika Slezak) standing in the doorway with shocked but concerned look on her face. From Echo and Charlie’s short meeting, all I can gather is that the two have some kind of sordid past and Echo appears to be a sneaky spitfire (Sound familiar anyone?). Hopefully, the storyline will play out well. I’m optimistic to see what kind of trouble Echo with stir up for Charlie and Viki. If we’re Lucky , Echo will go toe-to-toe with Dorian (Robin Strasser). Only time will tell if Echo can make her noise from the past, heard in the future. Let me know your thoughts on Echo’s 10-second return in the comments.

38 Responses

I haven’t watched it yet I’ll watch it online. It would be funny if they would make a reference with all the GL stars. Like you were my guiding light or something, would be nice jester to all the GL fans that will be watching. Can’t wait for her to interact with Jeffery Van Dorn. It will be wired to see her play different character. I loved seeing Hillary Smith is there, my favorite Margo. How is everyone adjust to the loss to ATWT? Just hope that she isn’t a wasted character like Rick Hurst on B&B.

ABC spends all the money on promoting GH. I don’t think they are getting results. Of course, the stuff on GH is ridiculous and gets worse by the minute. I am thinking “Parody.” For some reason, there is very little promotin for this show. I started watching two years ago after a friend steered me to it after they announced GL was going. I knew little about it. I often said to her, I can’t believe I didn’t start watching this show sooner. I think it is consistently the best. I understand some of the vets missing their favs. I went thru that with Gl/ATWTs. Being realistic time marches on.

wow, the daytime world gets no better than Kim Zimmer! i can’t imagine her just playing a supporting role, though, but we’ll see….i’m surprised that Kim’s move to Llanview didn’t get promo’d more. perhaps TPTB at OLTL are showing us that they’re not completely self serving. maybe they’re trying to get the message across that they recruited Kim for her amazing talent and not for ratings purposes or the large fan base she could bring. if this is the case, i think that OLTL should be commended…..

I agree it could have gotten a mention in a promo–that having been said–the most exciting thing that happened this week on OLTL wasn’t the 10 second appearance of Kim Zimmer–there were 5 full days of other stories. I’m sure this is only the beginning of a great story for her but realistically the disappointment that would have been shouted across the message boards if all week it was, “Guess who’s back in Llanview…and Echo from the past…” and all we got was 10 seconds on a Friday. They’re damned if the do and damned if they don’t. (Also: OLTL doesn’t do its own promos–a promo department at ABC in LA does them)

What do you expect? This is the show with the excellent long-term planning, like have Markko come back for 1 episode, then say he was out. The Tea stuff wa obviously re-written 10 times, as she got 5 different opinions from other doctors and Greg Evans apparently gave her chemotherapy, did the blood work etc. This show is a mess in terms of planning. Instead of promoting Kim Zimmer, they push the “Tea is alive” thing, which has been completely obvious for weeks.

[quote=NYFan2008]I agree it could have gotten a mention in a promo–that having been said–the most exciting thing that happened this week on OLTL wasn’t the 10 second appearance of Kim Zimmer–there were 5 full days of other stories. I’m sure this is only the beginning of a great story for her but realistically the disappointment that would have been shouted across the message boards if all week it was, “Guess who’s back in Llanview…and Echo from the past…” and all we got was 10 seconds on a Friday. They’re damned if the do and damned if they don’t. (Also: OLTL doesn’t do its own promos–a promo department at ABC in LA does them)[/quote]

Someone has to buy the people in LA a clue. We were told for weeks about the return of Queen Brenda on GH, yet they don’t think to promote the return of Kim Zimmer in a single promo?

Mel— I too dont understand why ABC didnt run any promos to advertise a multi emmy winning actress is joining the cast of OLTL!!!!
Even if they couldnt find old clips of Kim to run (considering most of her screen time was with Giles and old-Clint Clint Richie) they could have run some new scenes with her and Erika S & say something about two of daytimes biggest names mixing it up or something along those lines.
And I think KIM Z should have sat in as a cohost of The View to promote her joining the cast. Kim is a named daytime actress who had a fan following on CBS.
ABC is really dropping the ball on this one

HOWEVER- I dont mind that there has been no mention of Echo leading up to this. She is such a non issue in the lives of the characters at this point. Why would Clint & Viki speak of her now some 30 years later– when she never really came up before.
What I do like is that she is tied to Charlie. It makes sense- since Charlie is a fairly new charcater anyone who came to town from his past would most likely be a new character with newly created back story. SO since Echo has been gone for soooooooo long they have the oppurtunity to create a back story for her & tie her into Charlie.
I think it will turn out that Echo & Charlie are Rex’s parents! That they were young lovers who drifted and reunited later as adults and lost touch and now she’s back in his life again

[quote=whitney]i always felt that abc daytime embraced the daytime divas over 40 on its shows, and there’s definitely never been a shortage of older actors on OLTL.[/quote]

Yeah, but the older actors are on less and less. Instead of asking if Tea was alive through September, I was asking if Viki was alive. She seemed to be on a couple of episodes in weeks. Ilene Kristen is now never on. We are seeing Dorian less and less. I have real concerns Hillary B Smith could be out by the end of the year, as I believe her contract is up.

I like Zimmer and think she will bring some good story. But at the same time, I kind of resent it when we see Viki, Dorian, Nora, Roxy etc. much less.

[quote=whitney]wow, the daytime world gets no better than Kim Zimmer! i can’t imagine her just playing a supporting role, though, but we’ll see….i’m surprised that Kim’s move to Llanview didn’t get promo’d more. perhaps TPTB at OLTL are showing us that they’re not completely self serving. maybe they’re trying to get the message across that they recruited Kim for her amazing talent and not for ratings purposes or the large fan base she could bring. if this is the case, i think that OLTL should be commended…..[/quote]

They do nothing that isn’t for ratings. But again, this is about their priorities. We all knew that big T&T reunion would occur. It was obvious and predictable. But that was the angle they went for, and why OLTL got a household of 1.7 in the ratings. Don’t be fooled by the Ron C. and Carlivati contracts, folks. People on all soaps have contracts when they are cancelled.

yeah, but brenda’s return was to the same show and network, which made it so easy for abc to find and attract vanessa’s target fans since they’re generally with abc. kim, however, was beloved on a completely different network, one whose audience perhaps still watches cbs and wouldn’t even see the abc promos.

[quote=whitney]yeah, but brenda’s return was to the same show and network, which made it so easy for abc to find and attract vanessa’s target fans since they’re generally with abc. kim, however, was beloved on a completely different network, one whose audience perhaps still watches cbs and wouldn’t even see the abc promos.[/quote]

That’s true but you’d think they’d make some effort. Obviously, they can’t advertise on CBS. But if they said, “Guiding Light legends comes to One Life..” it might have had some effect. But doing nothing like they did certainly will have no effect. Only the folks who read her or read the soap mags will have a clue. And by the time word of mouth spreads, her story will be half over.

[quote=whitney]yeah, but brenda’s return was to the same show and network, which made it so easy for abc to find and attract vanessa’s target fans since they’re generally with abc. kim, however, was beloved on a completely different network, one whose audience perhaps still watches cbs and wouldn’t even see the abc promos.[/quote]

I would agree with this if I hadn’t seen all the promotion ABC did for Beth Ehlers and Ricky Paul Goldin when they came to AMC. It all boils down to the fact that ABC doesn’t care about OLTL. You have a popular multi-emmy winning actress coming onto your network and you can’t bother to run one little ad? Ridiculous. But I have to disagree with you Mel about the lack of mention of Echo on the show. It would be random if Clint and Viki started talking about her. I’m sure we’ll get the backstory next week. And Kim mentioned in an interview that they will be showing old clips. Anyways those 10 seconds on Friday got me excited for the start of this story.

I am looking forward to seeing how she fits in on OLTL and I will do so with an open mind. Unfortunately, my own other experience with her is when she showed up on one of my all-time favorite soaps, Santa Barbara, which then sank like a stone under her watch.

I’m not going to lie, I’m disappointed that ABC daytime did NOT promote the return of Kim Zimmer! They can go all out for the return of Brenda, but I mean this is Kim Zimmer for pete’s sake! I can take the 2 second scene with Charlie on Friday (cause I feel like the story will pick up on Monday & be entertaining there on out), but NO promotion I mean seriously! Very ill handled!

Storyline-wise – I wonder if this means that Rex’s parents are going to be Echo and Charlie? They seemed to have dropped all story regarding Rex’s search for his father so maybe this will tie up that loose end?

On the other hand it seems like a retcon that Echo a sophisticated European femme fatal would hook up with Charlie from Texas.

[quote=sodsince16]Storyline-wise – I wonder if this means that Rex’s parents are going to be Echo and Charlie? They seemed to have dropped all story regarding Rex’s search for his father so maybe this will tie up that loose end?

[/quote]

correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t at least one of Rex’s parents suppose to be Native American? How would Echo and Charlie be his parents? That wouldn’t make any sense!

oh, wait…they screwed up the s/l about Rex’s parents the first time…why not do it again??

I didn’t say Zimmer caused Santa Barbara to be cancelled. I said it sank like a stone after she joined. Too much attention was given to her brand new character, and those of us who never saw her on anything before had no allegiance to her. She was no Marcy Walker, and she just couldn’t fill the void left by her. I liked everyone else in her family on the show, but she was just awful.

With that said, I can understand the lack of promotion. No one really knows who the character is…so they are treating her like a brand new character.

Should they have promoted the actress? Maybe. I mean, GL has been off the air for over a year now right? How would you get the GL viewers other than the mags? Many CBS watchers don’t watch ABC. Many GL watchers don’t watch ATWT.. matter of fact when GL was canceled, I know of many people that stopped watching CBS daytime altogether (and I know that isn’t a representative sample). I don’t fault them for choosing to save money when they didn’t know if the risk would pay off.

Vanessa Marcil Whateverherlastnameisnow got a freakin’ countdown (“136 more days until Brenda returns to GH!”) AND SoapNet “Brendathon” for god’s sake and ABCD can’t even muster an “Emmy Aeard Winning Actress Kim Zimmer Joins OLTL Friday, October 2″? Fire their PR department now! KZ should’ve been on The View or SOMETHING.

My theory is that Echo has a past w/ Charlie back in his drinking days but she is Rex’s Mom w/ Clint as his dad. That would make Bo Rex’s uncle. It would also make for interesting story since Clint is blackmailing Rex to keep quiet right now.

I was watching OLTL in 1983 during Echo’s 6-month run on the show. I remember seeing KZ, Erika Slezak and Clint Ritchie on a talk show that fall (possibly Sally Jessy) and they said the story ended abruptly because of a change in producers or something and they were disappointed because they liked the story and working together, etc. Well because of that, KZ got to move on to the role of a lifetime for her.
I agree … they should have done a series of important Echo episodes from ’83, at least on SoapNet to introduce people to the character. The bare minimum should have been to show some old Echo clips on Soapnet.com. I have the pivotal episode where Echo executes her plan to frame Clint by jumping off the bridge (which was on location too!). Once I figure out how to digitize and upload to youtube, I’ll try so that you all can see it.

tvgord,
I was a huge SaBa fan and loved Eden. I had never seen Zimmer before but I fell in love. Once they got her away from Cruz she was fantastic. I loved her interaction with her kids and Thaao Pengalis. I’m the exception though, she was not well received. SaBa was tanking before she got there though.

Would have loved some promos. With ATWT just ending it would have been a great time to snag some cbs fans. Who knows maybe ABC read the scripts for her SL and realized they had a better chance of gaining viewers if noone saw her story arch.

Sometimes I think OLTL’s PR is all word-of-mouth. Their tiny budget would not even allow us to hear Roger was returning. Kim appears on a Friday and by the following Monday all the ex-GL viewers are suppose to know she is on and tune in for this big Ratings boost that gets OLTL out of last place. Not going to happen until Echo’s storyline is fleshed out a bit more. If it gets Vicki, Charlie and Clint more airtime then great. I just wonder which of the air hogs we see less of: the Fords or the Teens or(praise the lord) both. Because they are not going to cut into ME’s & TSJ’s airtime.

[quote=Islandof1]Sometimes I think OLTL’s PR is all word-of-mouth. Their tiny budget would not even allow us to hear Roger was returning. Kim appears on a Friday and by the following Monday all the ex-GL viewers are suppose to know she is on and tune in for this big Ratings boost that gets OLTL out of last place. Not going to happen until Echo’s storyline is fleshed out a bit more. If it gets Vicki, Charlie and Clint more airtime then great. I just wonder which of the air hogs we see less of: the Fords or the Teens or(praise the lord) both. Because they are not going to cut into ME’s & TSJ’s airtime.[/quote]

Sadly we will get what we got last year. 3 weeks or so of “story” for Viki and Dorian, then they will be almost MIA for November sweeps. We hardly saw them at all in September, so they will be taking a good deal of their appearance time for the rest of the year over the next few weeks. With Daddy Ford coming on, we certainly won’t see less of them.

Why are we comparing Brenda and Echo, really. Was echo such a hit that fans have been wanting her back on the show for years, it seems more like fans forgot about her once she left. What was to promote Echo is coming back for viewers to scratch their heads and ask who is Echo.

Could they have promoted the actress yes, but then again didn’t she give some interviews and I could have sworn I heard about her coming back before her air date so she was promoted. Maybe their isn’t enough money left in the budget, maybe they are saving for some other big promotional gig, or maybe Echo just didn’t warrant a huge promotion like Brenda did.

This one soap is just about ready to tell a demanding-but-insanely-popular diva where to go, and even has a contingency plan—a superstar from a recently cancelled soap, who is just itchin’ to join the cast of said show.

Could Jamey have been speaking about Zimmer going to B&B to replace Susan F
or
Are they testing the waters with Echo to write out Dorian????

However, if she continues to use the nickname “Chuckles,” I’m gonna turn it off. That’s driving me crazy.

LOVED her scene with Inez (Jessica Leccia), where she said, “Have you ever been to S…?” Springfield, obviously. That was great. (Now if I could only buy Leccia as the mother to someone who should be her love interest…)

Hard to believe after all these years that the Zimmer/A Martinez pairing on SB is STILL raising a stink. Marcy Walker left. What was SB to do? Martinez stayed, he was paired with Zimmer and Eileen Davidson (Kelly), and then HE left. Yes, Cruz and Eden should have been written out together, but actors gonna do what they gonna do. (Writers, on the other hand…to not have reunited the characters, EVEN OFFSCREEN, in the final ep, was disgusting to fans.) I do remember Jodie’s instaromance with Thaao Penghlis’ character, but then she went straight back to hubby Reese (Forry Smith–what happened to him?), who was fooling around with Reva’s niece, Mindy Sue! (Krista Tesreau as murderous Andie Klein!)

BTW, re: OLTL. Terrell Tilford was okay on GL A DECADE AGO as David Grant. What happened? The man has lost any acting “talent” he ever had. And why is Destiny so revered by fans? Annoying little Disney Channel wannabe actress…OVERactress, actually.

Anyway, I’m not enjoying much about OLTL, but I love Zimmer! But no more “Chuckles!”

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